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5.0 out of 5 stars
Gustav Mahler's meeting with Sigmund Freud remains a mystery, March 23, 2008
This review is from: Mahler: A Biography (Hardcover)
The Author describes, at appreciable length, why Gustav Mahler was widely misunderstood both as man and musician. More than 50 years after his death his works were left apart until, restored to life prompted by interest and performance, Mahler took his deserved place in the repertoires.
Mahler's tempestuous marriage to Alma Schindler is of particular interest. Alma claimed she was for decades the main authority of Mahler's works, values, character and his day-to-day actions and movements.
For many years, Alma's various publications quickly became the central source of information and references for Mahler scholars and music-lovers alike.
But, unfortunately, many writers have treated her accounts as unreliable, false, misleading and often impaired soundness. It is a fact that these imperfect accounts have nevertheless had a great influence upon several generations of music-lovers, hence the legend: "Alma's Problem"".
Mahler's youth, as described in the first two chapters is fascinating, like the reader's watching a live short resume cast by History Channel. There begins Mahler's occupation as summer composer "" in isolated huts in the country, and his revolutionary achievements as director of Vienna Opera. In 1907 Mahler resigned his post, many claimed he was driven from it, and went with Alma to America. Four years later his health in ruin and his marriage crumbling, he returned to Vienna and died there on the 18th of May 1911, a few weeks before his 51st birthday. He was buried four days later in Grinzing cemetery next to his daughter Maria (died in 1907)""
""On the day he died, that teeming rain on that blustery Monday afternoon, hundreds of ordinary Viennese crowded outside the little church where the service was held and the coffin blessed. Only minority had come to pay tribute to Mahler the composer. His gigantic Symphonies had rarely gone down well in Vienna and not a single one had been premiered there. But Mahler -the Opera Director- that was another matter. In a few stormy years he had lashed the institution at the heart of the city's cultural life to a peak of excellence it might never reach again. Many Viennese had acknowledged as much while Mahler was still at the helm. Now some erstwhile critics were starting to do so too. As one contemptuous Mahler fan put it, `'the same sneering somebody's'' who had attacked every Mahler production were now `'keen to belong to the exclusive circle of Mahlerites'""
The talented, ambitious and ruthless conductor is often degenerated in Alma's memoirs as a sickly and cerebral recluse; Arnold Schoenberg called him a `saint'. For some of Mahler's friends and disciples, he was a great creative artist. Mahler was even suicidal, often called `the Jewish Monkey'' because he was committed to his interpretations of Wagner, Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak, Berlioz, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, even Georges Bizet and many more. His violent conducting gesticulations had been subject to laughter from his peers, pupils, viewers and musicians. The man was simply very absorbed (committed) in his work; for instance he believed he made-up for Beethoven's deafness by offering interpretations that he felt was necessary in the Ninth Symphony which Beethoven must have had in mind. Yet one described Mahler's dynamite conducting `'Like a cat with convulsions"' He had many clashes with fellow conductors, theater directors, and even composers; something else, early on Mahler had a row with Brahms .While at the university, he worked as a music teacher and made his first major attempt at composition with the cantata Das klagende Lied. The work was entered in a competition where the jury was headed by Johannes Brahms, but failed to win a prize. (Did he feel the brunt of Jewish curse?? It could be!!)
(In later years, however, Brahms was greatly impressed by Mahler's conducting of Don Giovanni.). Similarly Mahler had noisy discussions with Richard Strauss on Strauss's tone poem `'Sinfonia Domestica'', Mahler simply couldn't hold his row.
Now, the author pinpointed inscriptions that go: To the `'holy Gustav Mahler'' and the `'immortal example of his works and deeds'' dedicated on one of the hundreds of wreaths lay beside the route between church and graveside. ""It came from Arnold Schonberg, often helped Mahler with cash and counsel, and other pioneers of the atonal school, including Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. Arnold Schonberg was one of those who, huddled under the umbrellas, trudged slowly behind the coffin as it was borne away from the church. So was the conductor Bruno Walter, destined to fight for wider recognition of Mahler's music on two continents over the half a century. So was Anna Bahr-Mildenburg, Mahler's greatest love before his marriage and transformed by him from a promising young singer into a dramatic soprano without peer. ""
Many more attended, there too was Mahler's revolutionary stage designer Alfred Roller, the poet and dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the painter Gustav Klimt, one of Alma's old flames. Alma herself did not attend - on doctors' orders, it was said. How cruel of Mahler's wife not to attend her husband's funeral! Had she really loved him? Had she really respected him despite all his flaws? Alma wrote two books (memoirs) - My Life, My Loves, and My Diaries 1898-1902) - and their impact on Mahler's studies was great for at least some 40 years.
Alma was a graceful, well-connected and influential woman who outlived Mahler by more than 50 years. (This reminds me of Cosima and Wagner. Cosima outlived Wagner by 47 years). How trustworthy is any story laid by women who outlive their notorious husbands for so long? Shouldn't they be given credence, though there may not have been full and final grain of truth in it?) - The greatest difficulty in writing one's memoirs is to keep a certain detachment at a time when passions were running high. True in her old age Alma wouldn't admit that her apprehensions with the past `'husband and wife"" days had been influenced with the benefit of hindsight when she now perceived the significance of events after they have occurred. Within 50 years Alma's reminiscences of past events couldn't pass without nostalgia or without an urging wistful desire to return, at least in written thoughts (modified and garbled), to a former time in one's life when young.
Enigmatic, though, was Mahler's meeting with Freud:
Gustav and Sigmund were Jews by birth. They had much more in common. Their thoughts had no relation to religion and did not oppose it. They were very strict, thoughtful and rigorous in observance of moral matters, often excessively so; rigidly austere Viennese gentlemen - by adoption.
When Freud had been a medical trainee in Vienna, Mahler was a student at the Conservatory. When met for the first and last time in the summer of 1910, Freud was 54 and Mahler at 50. With his heart troubles Mahler had less than a year to live. The time of the encounter was in the middle of a significant event in Mahler's life: the composer's marital problems with the young and beautiful Alma. Mahler was then very busy with his Tenth Symphony (he left it unfinished) and suddenly found Alma in total defiance and reticence towards him although he always wanted to be `good and loving husband''. Alma had, she complained in her memoirs" submitted to his tyranny and neglect long enough; she felt used, drained by his self-absorption"". (Music) The truth of her rebellion is perhaps accentuated by Mahler's chronic inability to attain an erection for the performance of their sexual act. Mahler had in him duel sense of guilt and panic - panic that was painful in the presence of Walter Gropius on the scene. Mahler therefore decided to take immediate action and he conceived Freud as his only savior.
During that summer of 1910, Sigmund Freud was spending his vacation in Leyden, Holland when he received a telegram asking for an appointment. The following day Herr Doctor received another telegram cancelling the first one. Mahler was in a state of indecision, unsteadiness and fluctuating mood. This was well drawn by his unbalanced behaviors in dispatching too many telegrams before he managed to get over his ever-present opposition to any attempt to bring his repressed thoughts into consciousness. Mahler and Freud met in a Leyden hotel and spent some four hours loitering about the town. Freud, the thickset and trusted doctor and Mahler, the slender, ailing and vehement composer - were devouring their cigars as they walked and talked. The Doctor conducted a brief analysis of the conductor's grievances: ""A mother fixation "" Freud ruled. On the one hand "" Mahler was attracted by his wife's youthful beauty but resented the fact that she was not old and careworn like his mother"". Alma, on the other hand, ""had a father complex and found her husband's age appealing"". Mahler was twenty years her senior.
Jonathan Carr describes this episode with additional clarity: ""Gustav's father, Bernhard, had a travelling sales job too but he went one better than his mother (G. Mahler's Grandma) and got hold of a horse and cart. Reckoning that knowledge was power he read books voraciously, even studied French, in spare moments on trips. It was no love match on either side when in 1857 he married Maria Hermann (usually called Marie), daughter of a soap-boiler and, at nineteen, ten years his junior. She limped and had a weak heart but arguably it was a step up socially for Bernard and he would have got a dowry. The first child, Isidor, died soon after birth in 1858. The second was Gustav.
An authoritarian father, a suffering, constantly pregnant mother (14 children) brothers and sisters borne off regularly in coffins; that, alas, was still an all too familiar picture in the 19th. Century. It did not necessarily mean...
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